There is only one route that I would go if I were you and that would be straight to Swift Trading. Swift Trading has turned many into millionaires. Call them today and see what they can do for you.
As a mature and experienced trader, I will have to second those who have given you the advice that it would be a damn stupid thing to give up your current income (with 3 kids!) on the very off chance that you will succeed in trading. However...if you have the itch so bad that you're about to jump off a cliff to scratch it, I suggest you take a vacation/leave/sabbatical from your current job and trade full time for a few weeks. If you find that it is generally a very difficult and usually frustrating experience, understand that those couple weeks aren't going to be much different than the rest of your trading career, no matter how long you are at it, or how profitable you are. It is the nature of the game. Then if you're smart you'll go right back to doing what you are doing now and forget the whole thing until you are safely retired, the kids are gone, and you have money literally to throw away.
MBA top 10 (Read article in BW starting on pg 42). 7 years of awareness of markets + portfolios (They are not being managed now). Indicator comments after MBA and 7 years and portfolios. "I've done a lot of testing" comment. What you have done is excuse yourself from becoming a trader and you did it based on your heritage and your academic pursuits and your career. You literally molded a wall that eliminates having an open mind to learn purposefully. You read like a cocktail party after the weekend sailing competition with A and B boats down at the Indian Harbor Yatch Club. Trading involves using a lot of money to make a real lot of money using one's mind. No one spends even 40 hours a week to make money. 500 bucks a day is just a 100K a year. 5,000 bucks a day is just a million a year. Trading is not about 500 or 5,000 bucks a day. It's big. When you were 27, you did the deed. Job, marriage, kids and building a mold you knew about and you started to build a wall way away from trading. Trading is gone for you.
Swift trade will take $5000 or more of your money and teach you everything you already learned from the books you have read.
Either do the above or actively swing trade. You will make more swing trading then trying to hack and kill on a daytrading basis. You are in a great position financially. Embrace it and move on. Add to your postion sizes swing trading and get a real plan to use. Do not give up your safety net, there is no safety net in trading. Beleive me. EF
Dont take advice from some aliases on a random message board. Instead, why not come down to Swift where real people will talk and help you out? Do you really think successful traders gather on message boards to chat during the market hours? You can be this guy trading 1 million shares of Microsoft in just ONE DAY.
What's your end goal? Do you just want to be a gazillionaire? Are you dissatisfied with your current job and you see this as a better job (why are you dissatisfied - I would be very unhappy working your hours)? If you had enough money to retire forever tomorrow - what would you do? If I were you, I'd also evaluate my lifestyle and see what truly makes me happy and see how much money I need to live on, who knows, you might be able to leave your job soon anyway and live on savings. More practical points - how much do you have right now to trade with?